A walk around Mayreau

Today we walked around most of the island's coastline, heading first to the windward beach. A few miles to the east lie Tobago Cays, protected by a huge coral reef, and we'll be heading there tomorrow to join the many yachts anchored there to enjoy the strictly-protected marine park.

We walked along spectacular beaches and met not a soul on the 2-hour walk. Mind you, the population is only 350 strong and the hotel trade is pretty well non-existent so maybe that's not a surprise.

 Beautiful rock colours

 Tobago Cays

Unfortunately the place isn't completely unspoiled: the blight of plastic bottles and other man-made detritus is such a shame. Plastics are a global problem and all yachties get angry about the amount of rubbish littering the beaches. Unfortunately these islands have no recycling facilities and, in some islands, the local culture doesn't seem to worry about discarding rubbish in the streets. A few are making strenuous efforts to change this culture but actually the visiting yachts impose a huge impact on the fragile waste systems of the islands. We work hard to minimise our impact and our on-board watermaker means that we don't buy bottled water (some yachts crossing the Atlantic had hundreds of bottles aboard, it seemed).